Amy Hubbell
Amy is Assistant Professor of French at Kansas State University and the Language and Culture Coordinator for the International Food Safety Network.
Salmonella Symptoms
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Someone came to the blog this morning searching “Salmonella Saintpaul flatulence” inspiring this post. As of last night 138 people in 11 states were sick from Salmonella in tomatoes.
According to http://www.about-salmonella.com/salmonella_symptoms_risks, Salmonella can cause gastroenteritis, typhoid fever, and bacteremia. The following are symptoms of Salmonella gastroenteritis:
- diarrhea
- abdominal cramps
- fever, generally 100°F to 102°F (38°C to 39°C)
- nausea, and/or
- vomiting
In mild cases diarrhea may be non-bloody, occur several times per day, and not be very voluminous; in severe cases it may be frequent, bloody and/or mucoid, and of high volume. Vomiting is less common than diarrhea.
Other frequently reported symptoms are
- headaches
- muscle pain, and
- joint pain
Whereas the diarrhea typically lasts 24 to 72 hours, patients often report fatigue and other nonspecific symptoms lasting 7 days or longer.
The FDA has a thorough analysis of Salmonella in their Bad Bug Book.
If you are concerned that you have food poisoning, you should contact your local health unit or Seattle law firm Marler-Clark that specializes in foodborne illness litigation.
Camembert Wars: if this is progress, I'll take mine pasteurized
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The AFP is reporting today that “real” camembert makers can rejoice. In addition to reducing the geographic boundaries of the camembert region, now the only camembert makers that will be recognized with the prestigious AOC (appellation d’origine contrôlée) label will:
- use only raw milk;
- have at least half of the cows providing the milk from Normandy origin; and,
- ensure that their cows graze on Normandy pastures for at least 6 months of the year and fed hay the remainder of the time.
The grazing restrictions are new to the AOC conditions. I find them particularly surprising as research has shown that grass-fed or not, all cows can carry E. coli O157:H7.
The “real camembert” supporters apparently found the decision to be “undeniable progress.” Lactalis and Isigny-Sainte-Mère, two large companies that previously produced more than 80% of AOC Camembert, decided last year to begin heat-treating their milk as a safety measure.
Francophiles, can read today's original story for themselves. The French clearly articulate that the raw milk camembert has a velvety taste compared to the pasteurized version, but that the traditional methods are more onerous because they require various testing measures to avoid pathogens such as listeria. According to my favorite food safety advisor, you cannot test your way to safe food. The new and improved camembert will have enhanced risks.
Making Love or Making Camembert
In an interview for CNN yesterday, the mayor of Saint-Loup de Fribois, France, Philippe Meslon said, "A camembert not made out of raw milk is like making love without sex.” This story, “France milks cheese for all its worth,” tracks the camembert business in Normandy and the struggle to earn the coveted Appelation d’Origine Contrôlée.
While I totally appreciate the tradition involved in making lait cru camembert (and personally love the taste), I still applaud the largest cheesemakers such as Lactalis and Isigny Sainte-Mère for choosing to heat-treat their milk. That safety measure meant that they consequently lost their AOC (“real camembert”) label, but it also meant significantly reducing the risks for their many consumers.
The mayor of Saint-Loup also says a Frenchman is “someone who cultivates with modern evolution his past. It's someone who protects moral values, cultural values and artistic values, and when I say cultural values I would include camembert." That’s a nicely ambivalent statement supporting a staple of his region’s economy.
Normand cheesemaker, François Durand has 40 cows and the AOC label. He proudly claims that making cheese is about not cutting corners. "You have to have the passion. Yes it's difficult because it means a lot of work. We make it all by hand.”
With recent changes in the large “industrial” cheeses, however, some camembert makers have been driven out of business. Michel Delorme says the new and stricter rules combined with his age made him stop producing handmade camembert. Although Durand misses his cheese, he’s kept some souvenirs such as his milk cans to remember his cheesemaking days.
Passion is important and nostalgia is nice, but the hundreds of years of tradition that go into camembert making in France need to include food safety practices to protect both French culture and consumers.
Hamburger Habits: Is Medium Safe?
I’m a reformed medium-rare hamburger eater. Before I met Doug, I always wanted my hamburgers pink in the middle and frankly had no clue that this was a potentially risky habit. Now that I’ve learned hamburger needs to be cooked to 165 F to be safe, however, I rarely eat hamburger unless Doug cooks it at home. That’s the only way I can assure that the cook is using a meat thermometer and knows how to properly do so.
Tonight, though, I’m in Buffalo, NY and I had dinner with two British friends in a rowdy Irish pub. While I intended to order salad, the pickings were few on the menu and I settled on a cheeseburger with fries. The waitress asked me, “How do you want that cooked.” Somewhat startled and without my food safety arsenal beside me, I said, “Medium.” I hate well-done hamburger because of the texture, but I wanted my burger safe. How could I tell her that?
My burger came and was very medium rare looking … very pink in the middle and done on the outside. I ate it. The whole thing. And it tasted good. And now I’m thinking about my foolish behavior and wondering if I’ll get e. coli. I know that color is a lousy indicator and I know it’s not likely I’ll get sick. But without the thermometer, how can you be sure?
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Summer sausage is tasty, maggots and all
I grew up in a deer hunting family, and although my own deer hunting career started and ended when I was 13, I was so used to eating venison that beef tasted weird. I still remember one deer my family butchered at home, and my brother chased me around the house with an eyeball. We packaged and marked the cuts, but they stayed in our family freezer. Perhaps we had some guests over for dinner or gave some to a friend at church, but if anyone got sick, it was us.
In Omaha, apparently, things are run differently. Deer processor and poacher extraordinaire Jack McClanahan was finally put out of the summer sausage business.
According to the Omaha World-Herald McClanahan processed and sold tons of tainted summer sausage, much of it from poached deer. McClanahan told federal undercover agents that he sometimes shot deer at night with a rifle from the bathroom window of his home in Omaha's Ponca Hills and then would retrieve the carcasses in the morning. He baited the deer with corn, used a spotlight to blind them, and then shot.
McClanahan is a retired butcher who sold summer sausage in 5-pound casings at $3.50 a pound. He also made salami, jerky and snack sticks, and authorities estimated annual production at about 10,000 pounds.
Mark Webb, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agent, said mouse droppings, maggots, deer carcasses, dried blood, deer hair and other contaminants littered the commercial-grade meat processing equipment that filled McClanahan's three-car garage. There was no running water for cleaning. When wildlife agents seized the equipment and cleaned it with hot water and soap at a carwash, they discovered two lead bullets the size of a man's thumb lodged in the grinder. The blade had been shaving lead into the meat.
The butcher-poacher was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years of probation Wednesday in U.S. District Court.
My family and most deer hunters I have known have a strong conservationist ethic. I was raised to respect wildlife and have a deep appreciation for nature. McClanahan, and other poachers, are appalling, but making humans sick and putting their lives at risk with filthy processing conditions is even more disgusting.
Washing your hands, California style
Doug and I are in L.A. for a few days and I’ve appreciated the prominent handwashing signs in public and private lavatories. This one comes from the outdoor Public Restroom off the beach at the famous Gladstone’s of Malibu seafood restaurant. I read the sign when I walked into the bathroom, but when I tried to wash my hands, the water came out of the faucet in a tiny trickle. The water pressure in their indoor/private facility was slightly better but still conservative. It’s impressive to have signage that indicates all the different times when one should wash her hands, but if the facilities are lacking, there isn’t much point.
The second sign, found today at a beach café in Long Beach, CA was also interesting because the Spanish appears larger than the English part. I also like the idea that I’m breaking state law if I do not wash my damn hands before returning to work.
Do happy cows make happy milk?
Are humans safer when they’re happy? Are you?
Ok. Now follow this logic…
Are cows?
I’m willing to go along with the California Cow commercial that claims “Great cheese comes from happy cows” and maybe even the only happy cows in the world come from California. Why not – the weather is nice and the people are laid-back. But does that necessarily mean their milk is safer?
In a post today on http://wewantorganicfood.com/
author, Lynn Cameron says, “If there could be a master key to safe raw milk, I think it would be contented cows.” The author contends that today, some raw milk is unsafe because some cows spend their days indoors, “living on field corn and soybeans to the degradation of their milk and the degeneration of the nation’s health.” I guess this is something akin to the cubicle complex.
Call me a skeptic, but I really need some science to back up this happy feeling. It’s nice to think that happy cows frolicking on the hill cannot produce anything bad. The author of the article rightfully makes a call to our nostalgia – to a happier time before farming was industrialized. Nostalgia is nice, but it does not make food safer. While Cameron says, “It’s not complicated science to understand that quality of life as well as diet affects cows’ milk quality,” her inability to produce that uncomplicated science leaves me completely unconvinced. This kind of thinking, that cows “raised entirely outdoors on green grass and/or hay, their milk is proven time and again greatly reduced in pathogens (bad bacteria),” has really not been proven as explained by David Renter in September 2006. “Cattle raised on diets of ‘grass, hay and other fibrous forage’ do contain E. coli O157:H7 bacteria in their feces as do other animals including deer, sheep, goats, bison, opossum, raccoons, birds, and many others.”
I’m completely in favor of good conditions and happy cows – who wouldn’t be? But even in the best conditions, microbiological contamination can happen – just as it happens in very happy homes with very content cooks. “Confinement cows” or “happy cows,” the only scientifically proven measure to reduce the risk of dangerous pathogens in milk is pasteurization.
Puking Myths: How to tell the difference between foodborne illness and the flu
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During the holidays I heard a couple of barf stories that were attributed to uncertain causes. At the same time, Doug and I were laid up with the flu for about two weeks, neither of us really puking but feeling exhausted, nauseated with chills and muscle aches. One woman said she had the flu, too … that it came on really fast, was coming out both ends, and then she felt better the next day. I asked her, “Are you sure it wasn’t foodborne illness?” “Might’ve been…” she replied thoughtfully, probably going over the list of things she had eaten. Another friend just got back from Chicago – a trip that she said was ruined by her husband puking his guts out. They thought it was the Polish buffet because while he chose some foods, she had others, and she assumed something he ate was off. Might’ve been. But how do you know when it’s food poisoning and when it’s the flu?
The following list of flu symptoms, which I looked up while I was laid up on the couch over break, comes from the CDC :
Influenza usually starts suddenly and may include the following symptoms:* Fever (usually high)
* Headache
* Tiredness (can be extreme)
* Cough
* Sore throat
* Runny or stuffy nose
* Body aches
* Diarrhea and vomiting (more common among children than adults)
Flufacts.com suggests you know the FACTS (Fever, Aches, Chills, Tiredness,
Sudden symptoms)
If you have foodborne illness, the FDA’s Bad Bug Book gives a comprehensive list of suspects by symptom and time of onset. It can be a little more complicated to diagnose as some toxins, such as shellfish toxin, can have an onset of diarrhea and vomiting in under an hour whereas salmonella takes on average 2-4 days to produce possible symptoms of abdominal cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, fever, chills, malaise, nausea, and/or headache.
Foodborne illness is not usually (although sometimes can be) caused by the last thing you ate, and the flu does not usually (but sometimes can) produce vomiting and diarrhea in adults. Next time you’re puking your guts out, if you can manage to concentrate, you might have to make a longer grocery list of items in your diet. Was it what you had three days ago? Might’ve been.
The Amazing Race: Who's ready to work up a thirst?
On the Amazing Race tonight, the teams traveled to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso where their challenge was to milk a camel and then drink a bowl full of raw camel milk. I was anxious to see if any of the teams would reject the challenge, as it can be a health risk. Yet, the only risks they were worried about were getting stepped on, the flies, the bugs, and the smell related to the warm milk. One of the contestants simply flipped out.
The first to finish, TK, said he had some trouble getting the milk down, “It was a little grainy. A little sweet and a little warm.”
It's undercooked... or is it?
Almost two weeks ago Top Chef’s cheftestant Sara M. was sent home after two consecutive undercooked dishes. Admittedly, her halibut in the Quickfire challenge was raw in the middle, but she didn’t agree that she served raw chicken at the French Culinary Institute. She told the judges, “I sliced the chicken myself, and I checked every single one,” and to her colleagues she insisted, “That chicken was not $#%-in raw, cause I cut every single one.” Still, Judge Gail Simmons said her chicken was pink, and as the night went on, her chicken became raw in the retelling.
Does the chicken in this picture look cooked to you? Color is a lousy indicator of the doneness of chicken. The pictured chicken comes from Pete Snyder, meat thermometer guru, and has been cooked to the required 165 F. Sara would have had a stronger case, had her flavors not been off, by using a meat thermometer and having hard evidence to back up her dish. Cutting the chicken and visually checking the internal temperature is not a proven food safety method.
Just yesterday the National Pork Board reportedly began their case for lowering the recommended cooking temperatures for pork from the currently approved 160F. Board member Steve Larsen said, "We've conducted an initial retail study and risk assessment, and the science of safety is definitely there to support the lowering." How would you know your pork is a few degrees off from optimal taste and safe cooking temperature just by looking at it? Ask pork superstar cheftestant Howie. He won once with perfectly cooked lamb chops that were verified with a thermometer.
